Pall Mall Gazette: “We can see in these rough diamonds the men who have of late so distinguished themselves at Eland’s River and elsewhere.”
The Argus: “More tales of the Joe Wilson series are promised, and this will be gratifying to Mr. Lawson’s admirers, for on the whole the sketches are the best work the writer has so far accomplished.”
The Academy:—“I have never read anything in modern English literature that is so absolutely democratic in tone, so much the real thing, as Joe Wilson’s Courtship. And so with all Lawson’s tales and sketches. Tolstoy and Howells, and Whitman and Kipling, and Zola and Hauptmann and Gorky have all written descriptions of ‘democratic’ life; but none of these celebrated authors, not even Maupassant himself, has so absolutely taken us inside the life as do the tales Joe Wilson’s Courtship and A Double Buggy at Lahey’s Creek, and it is this rare convincing tone of this Australian writer that gives him a great value. The most casual ‘newspapery’ and apparently artless art of this Australian writer carries with it a truer, finer, more delicate commentary on life than all the idealistic works of any of our genteel school of writers.”
VERSES: POPULAR AND HUMOROUS.
By HENRY LAWSON, Author of “When the World was Wide, and Other Verses,” “Joe Wilson and His Mates,” “On the Track and Over the Sliprails,” and “While the Billy Boils.”
Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (post free 4s.).
For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2.
Francis Thompson, in The Daily Chronicle: “He is a writer of strong and ringing ballad verse, who gets his blows straight in, and at his best makes them all tell. He can vignette the life he knows in a few touches, and in this book shows an increased power of selection.”
Academy: “Mr. Lawson’s work should be well known to our readers; for we have urged them often enough to make acquaintance with it. He has the gift of movement, and he rarely offers a loose rhyme. Technically, short of anxious lapidary work, these verses are excellent. He varies sentiment and humour very agreeably.”